POLL: 48% Found SOTU To Be “Very Positive”

Almost half of Americans who watched President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address — 48% — say they had a “very positive” impression of the speech, down from 57% of speech-watchers after his first address to match Barack Obama’s rating after his first State of the Union address, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. It’s the lowest net positive rating for a State of the Union address since at least 1998, when CNN first asked the question. There is no equivalent poll for addresses before 1998.

Some important caveats: This survey reflects the views of only those who watched the speech, not of all Americans. The poll was conducted among a group of Americans who said in prior interviews that they planned to watch the speech and were willing to be contacted after its conclusion. People who choose to watch a political speech tend to be more supportive of the speaker than the general population; this sample was about 7 points more Republican than the entire American population.

“This survey reflects the views of only those who watched the speech, not of all Americans.”

Granted, it’s not as though that will stop Trump and the GOP from playing this up.

CanuckDon

For sure! I find it hard to believe that there were that many people who could stomach listening to him for an hour….actually pretty frightening. I’m sorry for those 29% that voted negative who sat there and endured it.

Butch

There’s an informal poll over at Daily Kos that is currently showing more than 90 percent “did not watch.” I think that plus 7 GOP viewers is way off; the people who bothered to watch this speech were already predisposed to give it a positive rating.

Steve Smith

The speech, (from what I can gather as I’d sooner have my fingernails pulled out than watch Trump) wasn’t too awful. The fact that hardly a word of it was true, though, is a real drawback.

CanuckDon

Did they sub his voice for someone else’s?

Rambie

From the clips, it was his teleprompter reading monotone. They did a good job getting his uppers and downers mixed right, no slurring in the clips I’ve heard at least.

I did not watch, and made sure my cable box was tuned to The Food Network (instead of my default to Optimum’s local “News 12” since they were going to be carrying the speech on that channel and I did not want it to be counted.

I refuse to watch anything FOXNews or Trump. If he is like his daddy, standing up to applaud repeatedly is probably the most exercise he’s had for quite a while. How do they keep limber enough to have their heads up their own asses?

For El Jefe, that is all he needs – bring the “movable middle” into a sense of complacency, while he and his henchmen work to stoke the fires of a kind of “lip service” dominionist fundamentalism and xenophobic racist fascism so ardently desired by his white nationalist base (which is about a third of the populace, scary enough in and of itself)

S1AMER

Fact: Typically, viewership of SOTUs is higher (often much higher) among the president’s own party. Ergo, that 48% probably reflected more Republicans than Democrats.

That said, and assuming more Democrats than Republicans watched Obama’s first SOTU, Trump still did relatively poorly compared to Obama. I’d say that’s significant.

Todd20036

Read the last line in article above. The survey included only those who watched the speech, and in this case, that represented 7% more republicans than in the general population.
In other words, Trump got 48% of a crowd that was heavily republican.

Rex

Trump will say, or do, or tweet something by the end of the day that will negate anything positive he did actually say.

I had to look up the “FFS” acronym (again! I did it last week when a friend evoked it on facebook, but I still had to be reminded of the meaning).

The first thing that comes to mind when I see the acronym “FFS” is “Facial Feminization Surgery” (I haven’t needed it but I have friends who have felt the need) – but I know that usage didn’t fit the context. Then I remembered my friend using it just last week and re-checked via google.

Joe in PA

Hi Joann, I haven’t seen you posting much lately, good to see you. Yeah I’m usually the one having to look up the acronyms. 🙂

compared to western europeans, americans are incredibly stupid and badly educated. sad but true. why we are losing our democracy.

Charles Nelson

What the polls didn’t mention was the fact that 80% of watchers said they were Republicans and only 20% Democrats. What is most surprising is that only 48% of all watchers said that the speech was very positive.

Renfield

Why did Democrats even show up at this farce?

WKT20

Proximity to power and privilege is intoxicating. Saw a picture of Cory Booker smiling ear to ear and video of Tammy Duckworth clapping in response to the orange buffoon’s calls to increase nuclear arsenal. They just cannot fucking help themselves but bow down at his feet. I will NEVER vote for a republican, but damn if the dems don’t make it hard sometimes to be enthusiastic.

Mike

Since when is positivity the mark of a good SOTU speech? That’s a media-centric focus on the shallow and superficial.

marshlc

This, folks, is the magic of lowered expectations. Trump doesn’t actively shit his pants while at the podium, and everyone says how well he did.

rednekokie

Didn’t bother with it — as I do not enjoy listening to lie after lie. This one was a total waste of time, for those who wasted their time with it.

Steven Miller wrote the speech that El Jefe delivered in such a way as to attempt to sway the movable middle into complacency, while still throwing “meat” to the base. Miller made it clear in Trump’s speech that immigration law negotiations are going to be hardball – it may well be that nothing will get done by Congress. the Dreamers are a bargaining chip – What Trump wants to see is more EB-5 (green cards for investor immigrants coming with money) and fewer refugees.

The scariest thing was when Miller’s speechwriting dog-whistle had Trump invoke the spectre of “ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer” and “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” with this imagery:

” . . . what kind of Nation we are going to be. All of us, together, as one team, one people, and one American family.
We all share the same home, the same heart, the same destiny, and the same great American flag.
Together, we are rediscovering the American way.
In America, we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of the American life. Our motto is “in God we trust.”

One other thought – on the one hand, he wants America to have the biggest and best nukes.

On the other, he used the most scathing language to condemn North Korea for doing what is essentially the same thing. There were several paragraphs of speech in between the two points, though.

The_Wretched

Merely the fact that people watched it means they are morely likely to support the pres. The disgusted people didn’t watch or turned it off pretty fast.

Galvestonian

WHAT ? No points for reaction that state total Bullshit composed of meaningless patriotic statements strung together to mollify the public with carefully crafted points that were sugar coated to grab the public’s interest but don’t mean a damn thing. This wasn’t Trump — it was a bunch of back room hacks cutting and pasting false promises and egotistical hyperinflated statements that bragged of Trump’s smoke & mirror ‘deeds’. What crap !

Cipher

Ask if people believed what came out of his mouth.

JWC

Donny is a businessman and a salesman he knows how to work it as long as he stays on script

canoebum

48%. Subtract the 7% over count for Republicans and the 4.2% margin of error and we’re back in the mid-30s. 36.8%. Fuck CNN. Not even worthy of being called ass-kissers.

dempseyzdad

This “poll” means absolutely nothing. 48% of “those who watched it”…the only people who watched it were pro-trump. Not a big surprise.